A Gold Rush of Great Poetry

It's cold comfort to the ones without it To know how they struggled, how they suffered about it If their lives were exotic and strange, they would likely have gladly exchanged them for something a little more plain, maybe something a little more sane. ______ We are secrets to each other Each one's life a novel no one else has read Even joined in bonds of love We're linked to one another by such slender threads We are planets to each other Drifting in our orbits to a brief eclipse Each of us a world apart Alone and yet together, like two passing ships We are strangers to each other Full of sliding panels, an illusion show Acting well rehearsed routines or playing from the heart? It's hard for one to know We are islands to each other Building hopeful bridges on a troubled sea Some are burned or swept away, some we would not choose But we're not always free Just between us, I think it's time for us to recognize The differences we sometimes fear to show Just between us, I think it's time for us to realize The spaces in between leave room for you and I to grow ______ All the world's indeed a stage And we are merely players Performers and portrayers Each another's audience ______ Unstable condition, a symptom of life In mental and environmental change Atmospheric disturbance, the feverish flux Of human interface and interchange The impulse is pure, but sometimes our circuits get shorted By external interference Signals get crossed and the balance distorted By internal incoherence A tired mind becomes a shape-shifter Everybody needs a mood lifter Everybody needs reverse polarity Everybody's got mixed feelings About the function and the form Everybody's got to deviate from the norm An ounce of perception, a pound of obscure Process information at half speed Pause, rewind, replay, warm memory chip Random sample, hold the one you need Leave out the fiction; the fact is, this friction Will only be worn by persistence Leave out conditions; courageous convictions Will drag the dream into existence A tired mind becomes a shape-shifter Everybody needs a soft filter Everybody needs reverse polarity Everybody's got mixed feelings About the function and the form Everybody's got to elevate from the norm ______ Invisible airwaves crackle with life Bright antennae bristle with the energy Emotional feedback on timeless wavelength Bearing a gift beyond price, almost free All this machinery making modern music Can still be open hearted, not so coldly charted It's really just a question of your honesty One likes to believe in the freedom of music But glittering prizes and endless compromises Shatter the illusion of integrity For the words of the prophets were written on the studio wall, concert hall And echo with the sounds of salesmen ______ Sprawling on the fringes of the city In geometric order, an insulated border In between the bright lights and the far unlit unknown Growing up it all seems so one-sided Opinions all provided, the future pre-decided Detached and subdivided in the mass production zone Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone Subdivisions...in the high school halls, in the shopping malls Conform or be cast out Subdivisions...in the basement bars, in the backs of cars Be cool or be cast out Any escape might help to smooth the unattractive truth that the suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dreams of youth Drawn like moths we drift into the city The timeless old attraction, cruising for the action Lit up like a firefly just to feel the living night Some will sell their dreams for small desires Or lose the race to rats, get caught in ticking traps And start to dream of somewhere to relax their restless flight Somewhere out of a memory of lighted streets on quiet nights... _______ His world is under observation We monitor his station Under faces and the places Where he traces points of view He picks up scraps of conversation Radio and radiation From the dancers and romancers With the answers but no clue He'd love to spend the night in Zion He's been a long while in Babylon He'd like a lover's wings to fly on To a tropic isle of Avalon His world is under anesthetic Subdivided and synthetic His reliance on the giants In the science of the day He picks up scraps of information He's adept at adaptationB ecause for strangers and arrangers Constant change is here to stay He's got a force field and a flexible plan He's got a date with fate in a black sedan He plays fast forward for as long as he can But he won't need a bed, he's a digital man ______ The dancer slows her frantic pace in pain and desperation Her aching limbs and downcast face aglow with perspiration Stiff as wire, her lungs on fire with just the briefest pause Flooding through her memory, the echoes of old applause She limps across the floor and closes her bedroom door... The writer stares with glassy eyes, defies the empty page His beard is white, his face is lined and streaked with tears of rage Thirty years ago, how the words would flow with passion and precision But now his mind is dark and dulled by sickness and indecision And he stares out the kitchen door, where the sun will rise no more... Some are born to move the world, to live their fantasies But most of us just dream about the things we'd like to be Sadder still to watch it die than never to have known it For you, the blind who once could see The bell tolls for thee... ______ And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start To mold a new reality, closer to the heart______ Changes aren't permanent, but change is